RealClassic RGC NORTON TWIN SPECIAL
The parallel-twin OHV Norton Commando is widely regarded by everyone except Triumph T160 triple owners as the fastest and most desirable classic-era British streetbike. It made its 1967 debut at London's Earls Court Show in 745cc Fastback guise, and production began the following April.
Between then and 1978 when the Norton brand went into cold storage for three decades until it was revived in 2008, when Stuart Garner purchased the rights to the Norton trademark from American investor Oliver Curme, just under 50,000 Commandos were manufactured in its ten years of production. Curme had underwritten the 2003 creation of the born-again Commando 961 by US Norton guru Kenny Dreer, and after Indian manufacturer TVS acquired the bankrupt Norton Motorcycles company in April 2020 after Garner's demise, it has since re-engineered the Commando 961 to make it properly production-friendly. As such it rather paradoxically forms the bedrock of the Norton brand's proposed migration into an EV manufacturer under TVS ownership.
The Commando's origins can be traced back to the 1948 debut of the Bert Hopwooddesigned 497cc Norton Dominator, developed as a competitor to Triumph's best-selling Speed Twin. Hopwood had been on that model's design team at Triumph, before being poached to join Norton in April 1947, but left exactly one year later after an acrimonious falling out with Technical Director Joe Craig.
Craig refused to release the Dominator for production, based on the spurious allegation that Hopwood's vertical-twin engine lacked power, hence its performance was below par – but it entered production successfully with no alterations to its motor, albeit after Hopwood had left Norton. Later, in 1955 this morphed into the 597cc Model 99, then in 1960 a 646cc version was announced, which in 1962 evolved into the 750cc Atlas, before that was replaced by the Commando in 1967 – arguably the British industry's first real modern-day Superbike. Discuss.
However, none of these variants of Norton's parallel-twin platform ever matched in terms of sheer cubic capacity the bike which essentially represented their little-known precursor, the one-off 1056cc RGC Norton Twin Special. This was conjured up in his spare time during the darkest days of WW2 in his Birmingham home workshop by Bob Collier, later to join Norton in 1949 as one of its Bracebridge St. factory's development fitters.
Britain has alwaysto several of Bob Collier's creations.
